


Like a Libation

by enthugger



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Angst, Canon Era, Fight Aftermath, Grantaire is an idiot, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Whump, Whumptober, broken ribs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-12-01 23:56:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20940923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enthugger/pseuds/enthugger
Summary: It’s his ribs, he knows the feeling, maybe two of them. But it’s something else entirely that’s left him shivering with a sense of cold that shouldn’t be this late in the spring, that’s caught his breath in his throat and choked him with a harsh sob that makes his chest feel like it’s about to split open.It’s not just the ribs, he knows.One of those fics where Grantaire hits rock bottom and gets a glimpse of Enjolras's softness while he's down there.





	Like a Libation

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what whumptober is, but I feel like it's my calling. 
> 
> Thank you, Emily for talking about this with me and inspiring me with good good dialogue and just inspiring me in general.

There are few things more miserable than crying with broken ribs, Grantaire has learned.

At first, it makes him see stars. Then, it makes him think in the kind of abstractions that always unsettle him to his core without the comforting blankness of wine to mask their shadows.

He’s surprised he was able to get himself to his own doorstep, but he supposes that years of drunken practice and a vague fear of the eviction that he knows would follow if he were discovered in this state has somehow held him together long enough to drag himself over the threshold and close the door.

He hasn’t moved since.

He’s leaned over the table with one hand braced against it – knuckles bloody and swollen, but right now it’s the least of his problems – the other wrapped around himself in some failed attempt to hold his insides together where he feels like a part of his chest has shattered irreparably inside of him.

It’s his ribs, he knows the feeling, maybe two of them. But it’s something else entirely that’s left him shivering with a sense of cold that shouldn’t be this late in the spring, that’s caught his breath in his throat and choked him with a harsh sob that makes his chest feel like it’s about to split open.

It’s not just the ribs, he knows.

It’s something like a one-sided oration that’s always half-forming in the back of his mind, something that would make Cicero roll his eyes in disgust. It’s full of words he knows will never come together fluently enough to change anyone’s mind. Enjolras has always been the gifted one. Even when it seems that Grantaire speaks twice as much and tries twice as hard to convey any small subsection of his thoughts, they come out wrong, jumbled up with the fear and the guilt and the hatred that sit always at the ready in the back of his throat.

He couldn’t have told Enjolras the truth, even if he’d tried. Like everything that happens between them, Grantaire is more than willing to take the fall for it. It’s the least he can do, in the face of everything that Enjolras is, and what’s a little more hatred on top of it all.

If there’s a knock on the door, he doesn’t hear it.

“Grantaire, what have you done?”

The voice is angry, quiet with that kind of barely contained fury that Gratnaire is no stranger to, and the only thought that crosses his sluggish mind is just how tired he is of fighting. He’s done enough tonight already, ruined enough. He’s not sure there’s much left for him to fight for.

He doesn’t bother turning around; he simply curls into himself and bites his lip, braces himself for a hit that never comes.

“I –” The voice falters. “Are you alright?”

And Grantaire already knows who it is without needing to turn around, even through the uncharacteristic confusion gentling the edges of his tone. He always knows.

He tries once more to catch his breath, at least enough to speak.

“It was my understanding that you weren’t concerning yourself with my wellbeing,” he says, his voice rough and weak even to his own ears. “If you’ve come to throw me out for good you needn’t have bothered.” He feels tears sting the edges of his eyes again, one of them already half-swollen shut. “You made that perfectly clear before, Enjolras.”

Enjolras, for his part, stays silent and for a few strained moments the only sound in the room is Grantaire’s uneven breathing. Then there are footsteps, covering the short space between the door and the table Grantaire has propped himself up against and before his scrambled brain has a chance to process any further, Enjolras is beside him.

“Are you injured?” Enjolras asks, his tone serious and Grantaire doesn’t think he’s ever been able to handle this level of scrutiny, never from Enjolras, who always manages to see through to the very worst parts of him. And never like this, when he can hardly think through pressure around his thoughts, lost in a sea of things he’s sure he’d forgotten: long-ago memorized translations, all the wrong ways to hold a paintbrush, and all the times Enjolras has ever looked at him, all the times Grantaire has wished to slice himself open on the sharpness of Enjolras’s jaw and pour himself out like a libation.

“It’s nothing,” Grantaire says, forcing the words out before they catch in his throat for good.

It’s not until Enjolras reaches for him – hesitant, Grantaire can’t help but notice from the corner of his eye – that he tries to move again.

The thought of Enjolras touching him, of his hands shoving Grantaire farther away than his words already have, hurts far more than anything his body has endured that night. It’s an instinct, when he lets go of the table and pushes his hand against Enjolras’s chest in an attempt to get him out of his space first, before Enjolras forces him away forever.

His broken body, however, has other ideas. He can’t hold back a curse of pain at his sudden attempt at movement and then he’s doubled over again.

“You’re injured!”

Enjolras’s hands are on him despite his protests, supporting him gently as he lowers him down into Grantaire’s one chair. Once he’s seated, Enjolras lets go immediately. Grantaire doesn’t blame him.

Instead, Enjolras crouches down in front of him, his hands braced against his own knees and a part of Grantaire is keenly aware of every piece of distance between them. He feels every moment after Enjolras lets go of him like the throbbing in his chest.

It takes him a moment to register that Enjolras is speaking again.

“-going to fetch Joly. Try not to move while I’m gone.”

“No!” Grantaire looks up at him for the first time. “No, Joly has set my ribs three times before. I can’t go to him again; he worries.”

“Combeferre, then,” Enjolras says.

“Combeferre resets my nose far too often. And he’s done a good job of it. If it weren’t for his good graces, I would be far uglier than I already am.”

“How many fights do you get into?” Enjolras asks, exasperation coloring his tone.

“I can’t help myself,” Grantaire says, somehow unable to look away from Enjolras’s eyes now that he’s met them. “Any time I hear people talk ill of you I –“

Enjolras’s expression darkens into a frown.

“What?” There’s a sudden harshness to his tone and Grantaire realizes that he’s said too much.

“It’s nothing, Enjolras,” He tries hastily to recover, tries to think past the pain in his ribs and the pounding in his head. “It’s like you said, I’m a brute and a drunk. I always did take after my father, you know –“

“Stop,” Enjolras says: it’s a command as much as it’s a plea and Grantaire swallows back his words along with the bitter taste of copper. He must have split his lip, either in the fight or in his own failed attempts to stay quiet. He hasn’t realized. “People talk ill of me,” Enjolras says. “Do you mean that happened tonight?” He’s speaking slowly, like he’s picking out each of his words with careful precision.

“I was there, of course, and I always speak ill of you.” It’s a poor attempt to rile him up, to joke his way out of the realities he’s brought upon himself.

“Answer the question, Grantaire.” Enjolras cuts him off and again, Grantaire feels the compulsion to obey that only Enjolras can get from him. He shifts slightly in the chair in an attempt to find a position that puts less pressure on his ribs, fails, and starts to tell the truth.

“There was a man at the table next to mine,” he says. “I overheard him.”

Enjolras reaches out. For a moment his hand hovers above Grantaire’s, his fingers not quite touching the slowly drying blood on his knuckles, but he seems to think better of it and pulls his hand back.

Grantaire continues, “He was laughing at you, saying you were doomed to fail, calling you, well, things less polite than a Ganymede. He said, in no uncertain terms, that he would turn you in the moment the deal was made.”  
Grantaire feels inexplicably calmer now that he’s said it out loud, but not in a way that brings comfort. He can’t imagine ever feeling fully comfortable around Enjolras.

And speaking of Enjolras, the hand still resting on his knee has formed into a fist so tight that his knuckles look white against his already pale skin and Grantaire doesn’t think he can handle Enjolras’s anger again after all this, but there’s nothing more he can do to stop it – he’s brought it on himself, as always – so he merely sits, waiting.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Enjolras asks, and there’s a note of concern in his tone that surprises Grantaire enough to look up at him. “I blamed you. I said things that – why didn’t you tell me this then?”

He’s so painfully sincere that Grantaire is afraid he might cry again.

“Because I’m me,” Grantaire says, stripped down to bare truth. “Because you’ve always hated me, and I didn’t see a reason to give you any more doubt than I already do. It seemed easier for you to simply blame me.”

Enjolras does take his hand then, gently, far more gently than Grantaire deserves, holding it like its something fragile to take care of.

Grantaire wants a drink, wants anything to wash the taste of blood from his mouth, wants anything to distract himself from the way he craves Enjolras’ touch like a man dying of thirst.

“I don’t blame you,” Enjolras says. “And I don’t hate you. You confuse me, frustrate me, yes, but it’s never been hate. Grantaire, you must know this.”

Grantaire tries to shrug in response, an echo of the kind of carelessness he always wraps around himself as a barrier, but it pulls against his chest and he lets out a strangled gasp.

“You need a doctor,” Enjolras says again, urgency undermining his gentleness. His other hand comes up to cover Grantaire’s where he holds it, hiding its injured knuckles from view.

“No!” Grantaire tries to protest once more. He can feel himself slipping back into an oblivion that should feel like relief, but with Enjolras in front of him, holding onto a small piece of Grantaire like it’s something precious, he fights against it. He’s afraid, more than anything, of the loneliness he knows will meet him when he wakes. 

“Combeferre is closest. We’ll go to him.”

“Will you – “ Grantaire starts to ask for something but finds himself suddenly unable to do anything but tighten his grip on Enjolras’s hand, holding on hard enough that it hurts. And he thinks he might be delirious already when Enjolras moves again to cup Grantaire’s cheek, his thumb ghosting just beneath Grantaire’s injured eye.

“I will stay with you,” Enjolras says with a kind of reverence, wrapped up in the promise of something that Grantiare knows for a fact he doesn’t deserve, like it’s a certainty.

And despite the pain and the tears drying sticky with the blood on his face, Grantaire thinks that he could stay here forever. Enjolras’s palm is warm against his cheek and his pale eyebrows are drawn together in a frown and he’s close enough that Grantaire imagines he can feel Enjolras’s breaths stirring his hair. It’s an oblivion so sweet he’d never dare to dream of it. 

But Enjolras is moving all too soon, his hands tight against Grantaire’s forearms as he lifts him up, wraps a supporting arm around his back and makes soft, barely audible hushing sounds at Grantaire’ involuntary grunt of pain when he stands again.

Grantaire doesn’t quite make it all the way to Combeferre’s before he loses consciousness, but he feels Enjolras’s arm warm and steady around his back and for the first time in a long time, he feels protected.


End file.
